Wednesday, June 8, 2011

GenDetective

After seeing a few others posting about the new GenDetective product from Rumblesoft, Inc., I decided I would download it and use the 10-day evaluation to determine whether to recommend it or not. I've used GenSmarts for a while now to help me figure out which data is still missing, where I have errors, and so forth. I wanted to see if GenDetective would give me a compelling reason to switch products, and better help me clean up and fill out my database.

Unfortunately, I ran into a slight problem. GenDetective appeared to install correctly, and when I ran to program, it started with a setup wizard like many programs do now. However, after importing my GEDCOM file (apparently successfully, as it reported some statistics on the data), it crashed on the screen where I would select individual(s) as my anchors. Try as I might, it crashed at that point every time. I tried their sample GEDCOM included with the download, and it ran fine, allowing me to look at the reports it creates. Even after that success, it failed again when trying my data. I even went back and tried an older version of my GEDCOM (exported from MyHeritage Family Tree Builder, my main genealogy software)that I used when playing with Legacy after the 7.5 release. Same crash, at the same point.

My GEDCOM has over 5,000 people in it, I wonder if that's the issue? I could see a trial version being limited. Or maybe there's a problem with the way MyHeritage's Family Tree Builder exports a GEDCOM? I've never had a problem with that before, but to test that, I exported a GEDCOM 5.5 file from Legacy 7.5 (also with over 5,000 people, to test that theory). Well! Fortunately, that exported GEDCOM file was accepted into GenDetective just fine. I'll report back on my findings once I've had some time to play around with it.

In the meantime, I sent an e-mail to Rumblesoft's Technical Support folks. I got a response that was understandable, but less than helpful in the short term:

We will be out of the office from Wednesday June 8 thru Monday June
13th attending the Southern California Jamboree! We will respond to
your email as soon as possible.

--
Regards,
Technical Support

So, all of you folks at the Jamboree, enjoy yourselves, and send those guys back to work so they can look at my problem!

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